MARYA WAS EMBARRASSED that her mother refused to come inside the Kureliks’ house when Mrs. Kurelik invited her. Wouldn’t they like to dry off a little, wouldn’t they like to get warm? Mrs. Kurelik asked nervously, staring all the while at Marya’s mother, who never seemed to exactly hear what was being said and wouldn’t look her in the face—just stood at the edge of the veranda with her shoulders hunched in the soiled wool jacket, the baby sleeping and twitching in the crook of her arm, her gaze sullen and hooded, looking over toward one of the barns where Mrs. Kurelik’s son was loading up. Mrs. Kurelik was saying that she’d made sweet rolls the day before, maybe the children would like some, but Marya’s mother didn’t reply and Marya and Davy knew better than to answer on their own. Away from home, when people talked to Marya’s mother or asked her questions, she never replied right away, always a minute or two later, when you thought she wasn’t going to reply at all.

Suddenly she said in a flat hard angry voice, “They already had their breakfast. They do their eating at home.”

Marya remembered, a long time ago, her and her mother walking along the road toward town. There’d been a quarrel at home and Marya’s mother dragged her out, she hadn’t brought Davy, the baby wasn’t born yet, just the two of them, Marya and her mother, walking toward town. Marya’s mother was saying things but not for Marya to hear. She had broken a willow branch off a tree and was slashing at weeds alongside the road, at the Queen Anne’s lace in particular because it was growing all over and it had a tiny black dot at the center, she told Marya never to look because it was nasty, the tiny black dot at the center, you’d think it was an insect or something, a surprise, not a nice surprise—this pretty flower that looks all white but has a tiny black thing in it, hidden unless you got close. She told Marya not to look but of course Marya did, when her mother wasn’t around.

They’d been walking perhaps half an hour when a car braked to a stop, raising dust. A man asked out the window would they like a ride, were they going to town?—a man Marya hadn’t ever seen before, not one of her father’s friends who came by the house. But Marya’s mother kept on walking as if she didn’t hear, as if she hadn’t noticed the car. She was still switching the willow branch about; her long black hair was all windblown and snarled down her back. Marya wouldn’t look at the man but she knew he was staring at them both.